The 2002 Gordon Research Conference on Lasers in Medicine and biology will be held from July 14-19, 2002 at Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire. The intent of the conference is to gather investigators from academia, governmental agencies, national laboratories and industry to examine future applications of lasers and optical sciences in medicine and surgery. Particular emphasis is placed on technological advances that are close to clinical application and/or commercial development. Sessions include: Optical Coherence Tomography; Nanotechnologies for Optical Sensing, Imaging, and Manipulation; Biological Applications of Micro-optical Devices; Combined Imaging Methodologies; Fluorescence Methods for Biomedical Diagnostics; Advances in Optical Microscopy; Intra-vital Imaging and Microscopy; Wavefront Sensing and Adaptive Optics in Vision Correction; and Photodynamic Therapy. Seven of the nine sessions include at least one talk with substantial applications in the area of cancer diagnostics. An important focus of the Gordon Conference is to bring students and post-doctoral fellows in biomedical engineering together with academic engineers and scientists, clinicians and members of industry to discuss and define the most important questions and problems to be solved in this field. Ample time between sessions has been schedule to foster informal discussion of new ideas emerging from the conference. In addition to traditional scientific presentations, we have organized two special symposia to facilitate this discussion process. The first symposium, "Career Paths in Biomedical Engineering", will feature short presentations from clinicians and engineers in academia, industry and government to provide career advice to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. The second symposium, a special industrial forum, will highlight new technologic developments on the cusp of clinical viability. Industrial participants will each make a brief presentation followed by questions and answers. Both symposia will conclude with a general discussion followed by a reception. Finally, a special issue of the Journal of Biomedical Optics will be devoted to Optical Detection: Clinical and Industrial Advances. Conference attendees presenting talks or posters will be invited to submit their work for this special issue.